he like?"

"Fond of his dinner; he won't worry you," said Steel, reassuringly. "Nor
need you really bother your head about all that any more. Nobody has
recognized you yet; nobody is in the least likely to do so down here.
Don't you see how delightfully provincial they are? There's a local
lawyer, a pillar of all the virtues, who has misappropriated his own
daughter-in-law's marriage portion and fled the country with the
principal boy in their last pantomime; there are a lot of smart young
fellows who are making a sporting thousand every other day out of iron
warrants; the district's looking up after thirty years' bad times; and
this is the sort of thing it's talking about. These are its heroes and
its villains. All you hear from London is what the last man spent when
he was up, and where he dined; and from all I can gather, the Tichborne
trial made less impression down here than that of a Delverton parson who
got into trouble about the same time."

"They must have heard of my trial," said Rachel, in a low voice. They
were walking in the grounds after breakfast, but she looked round before
speaking at all.

"They would glance at it," said Steel, with a shrug; "an occasional
schoolboy might read it through; but even if you were guilty, and were
here on view, you would command much less attention than the local
malefactor in an infinitely smaller way. I am sorry I put it quite like
that," added Steel, as Rachel winced, "but I feel convinced about it,
and only wish I could convince you."

And he did so, more or less; but the fear of recognition had increased
in Rachel, instead of abating, as time went on. It had increased
especially since the rapid ripening of her acquaintance with Morna
Woodgate into the intimacy which already subsisted between the two young
wives. Rachel had told her husband that she would not have Morna know
for anything; and he had appeared in his own dark way to sympathize with
a solicitude which was more actual than necessary; but that was perhaps
because he approved of Mrs. Woodgate on his own account. And so rare was
that approval, as a positive and known quantity, yet so marked in this
case, that he usually contrived to share Morna's society with his wife.

"You shall not monopolize Mrs. Woodgate," he would say with all urbanity
as he joined them when least expected. "I was first in the field, you
know!"

And in the field he would remain. There were no commands, no wishes to
obey in the mat